Post by toejam on Jun 2, 2005 22:43:46 GMT -8
A month or so back, when some conservative Christians asserted that Democrats and liberals attempting to block the confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees were anti-Christian, Bob Edgar, head of the National Council of Churches Nobody Goes To Anymore, pretended to be shocked and offended:
We are surprised and grieved by a campaign launched this week by Family Research Council and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who said that those who disagree with them on President Bush’s judicial nominees are "against people of faith." This campaign, which they are calling ’Justice Sunday,’ should properly be called "Just-Us" Sunday. Their attempt to impose on the entire country a narrow, exclusivist, private view of truth is a dangerous, divisive tactic. It serves to further polarize our nation, and it disenfranchises and demonizes good people of faith who hold political beliefs that differ from theirs.
To brand any group of American citizens as ’anti-Christian’ simply because they differ on political issues runs counter to the values of both faith and democracy. It is especially disheartening when that accusation is aimed at fellow Christians. The National Council of Churches encompasses more than 45 million believers across a broad spectrum of theology and politics who work together on issues important to our society. If they disagree with Senator Frist’s political positions, are these 45 million Christians now considered ’anti-Christian’?
In the spirit of 1 Timothy 6:3-5, we urge Senator Frist and the Family Research Council to reconsider their plan. We will be praying for the Lord to minister to them and change their hearts so that they will not continue to take our nation down this destructive path.
Which makes this recent shrieking hysterical hissy-fit meeting co-sponsored by Bob's little leftist debating society all the more interesting. Some highlights:
On April 29 and 30, liberal activists gathered in New York City for a weekend conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right." The program consisted of speeches with alarmist titles like "The Rise of Dominionism in U.S. Government," "Is an Unholy American Theocracy Here?," "Christian Jihad," and "Fundamentalism: The Fear and The Rage." There were no conservative Christians on the program.
The conference was sponsored by People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the National Council of Churches (NCC), along with the left-wing periodicals The Nation and The Village Voice. It was organized by the New York Open Center and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
The tone of the speakers was often quite shrill. "Jim Jones [the 1970s cult leader who led followers in a mass suicide] has gone mainstream!" cried journalist Katherine Yurica. "Today we are living in a nation governed by an unholy cult!" Yurica maintained that the Republican Party had gained power through "Hitlerian tactics." She insisted that evangelical leaders from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell "had to have read Hitler’s Mein Kampf." She explained, "I say this confidently because anyone who has learned to quack like a duck has studied ducks!"
"Our liberties are at stake!" declared the Rev. Bob Edgar, the NCC general secretary. Edgar added that "these may be the darkest times in our history." (It was not clear who or what constituted the "we" for which Edgar spoke. Was it America, the NCC, or the political left that had entered "the darkest times"? Perhaps Edgar’s failure to make a distinction among those three was a revealing moment.) According to the NCC leader, all of the gains of the civil rights movement are imperiled by "those in power in Washington" who are "taking us back to the 1940s."
Joan Bokaer, the founder of Cornell University’s Theocracywatch.org, decried the rise of an American Taliban, evidenced for her in the fine levied upon CBS for its complicity in the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl half-time show. Dr. Charles Strozier, a history professor at the City University of New York, described the "basically neo-fascist schemes of the new Republicans."
"We’ve got a police state-plus going on here!" cried author Mark Crispin Miller. Miller also claimed that there was "significant Christian extremism in the Pentagon" and that the U.S. Air Force Academy is "like a madrassah."
Without elaborating, writer Jeff Sharlet claimed that the government of Norway is controlled "through and through" by Doug Coe’s Virginia-based Christian group known as the International Foundation. According to Sharlet, the unifying philosophy for Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, and other evangelical groups and leaders is "what they see as the unbreakable bond between Christ and capitalism."
The speakers condemned Republican policies on Iraq, Israel, taxes, the size of government, abortion, and gay rights, among other topics. At times the animosity towards President Bush became quite personal. Strozier made unsubstantiated accusations regarding Bush’s sex life. Yurica called the president a "coward" and a liar, to hearty applause. She said that she identified Bush with "the evil," and she saw him as driven by an obsessive fear that his "real nature will be revealed." Miller declared, "You can’t call George Bush a Christian!" (He made the same pronouncement about conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.) Sharlet, however, made a point of repudiating that judgment as inappropriate.
Another featured speaker was Joseph Hough, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York. Hough mocked Southern Baptist leader Richard Land for opposing homosexual practice while not following Old Testament dietary laws. He complained that John 14:6 (Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." NRSV) had been taken out of context to support a "Christian exclusivism." According to Hough, "that one verse is responsible for the Holocaust." Noting that he "strongly support" homosexuality and abortion rights, the seminary president said that he was "fed up with" the strong focus on those issues by conservative Christians. "Not a single leader of the Religious Right and not a single Catholic bishop that I know of" has "uttered a word" against greed, he charged.
Skipp Porteous, a former Pentecostal minister who ultimately "rejected the New Testament as the Word of God" and has "never looked back," called on "the mainline Protestant churches" to "reclaim the Bible." Chip Berlet, editor of Eye’s Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, spoke of his appreciation for the NCC as a counter-voice to conservative Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant clergy.
The NCC’s Edgar indicated that he has no intention of finding common ground with conservative Christians. When asked by an audience member if "we" should try to reach out to "the religious right" or simply fight it, the NCC leader replied that since "the right already has its structure," the "religious left" should instead focus on organizing itself, "infiltrate[ing] our seminaries," and reaching out to "the middle church, the middle synagogue, the middle mosque."
We are surprised and grieved by a campaign launched this week by Family Research Council and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who said that those who disagree with them on President Bush’s judicial nominees are "against people of faith." This campaign, which they are calling ’Justice Sunday,’ should properly be called "Just-Us" Sunday. Their attempt to impose on the entire country a narrow, exclusivist, private view of truth is a dangerous, divisive tactic. It serves to further polarize our nation, and it disenfranchises and demonizes good people of faith who hold political beliefs that differ from theirs.
To brand any group of American citizens as ’anti-Christian’ simply because they differ on political issues runs counter to the values of both faith and democracy. It is especially disheartening when that accusation is aimed at fellow Christians. The National Council of Churches encompasses more than 45 million believers across a broad spectrum of theology and politics who work together on issues important to our society. If they disagree with Senator Frist’s political positions, are these 45 million Christians now considered ’anti-Christian’?
In the spirit of 1 Timothy 6:3-5, we urge Senator Frist and the Family Research Council to reconsider their plan. We will be praying for the Lord to minister to them and change their hearts so that they will not continue to take our nation down this destructive path.
Which makes this recent shrieking hysterical hissy-fit meeting co-sponsored by Bob's little leftist debating society all the more interesting. Some highlights:
On April 29 and 30, liberal activists gathered in New York City for a weekend conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right." The program consisted of speeches with alarmist titles like "The Rise of Dominionism in U.S. Government," "Is an Unholy American Theocracy Here?," "Christian Jihad," and "Fundamentalism: The Fear and The Rage." There were no conservative Christians on the program.
The conference was sponsored by People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the National Council of Churches (NCC), along with the left-wing periodicals The Nation and The Village Voice. It was organized by the New York Open Center and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
The tone of the speakers was often quite shrill. "Jim Jones [the 1970s cult leader who led followers in a mass suicide] has gone mainstream!" cried journalist Katherine Yurica. "Today we are living in a nation governed by an unholy cult!" Yurica maintained that the Republican Party had gained power through "Hitlerian tactics." She insisted that evangelical leaders from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell "had to have read Hitler’s Mein Kampf." She explained, "I say this confidently because anyone who has learned to quack like a duck has studied ducks!"
"Our liberties are at stake!" declared the Rev. Bob Edgar, the NCC general secretary. Edgar added that "these may be the darkest times in our history." (It was not clear who or what constituted the "we" for which Edgar spoke. Was it America, the NCC, or the political left that had entered "the darkest times"? Perhaps Edgar’s failure to make a distinction among those three was a revealing moment.) According to the NCC leader, all of the gains of the civil rights movement are imperiled by "those in power in Washington" who are "taking us back to the 1940s."
Joan Bokaer, the founder of Cornell University’s Theocracywatch.org, decried the rise of an American Taliban, evidenced for her in the fine levied upon CBS for its complicity in the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl half-time show. Dr. Charles Strozier, a history professor at the City University of New York, described the "basically neo-fascist schemes of the new Republicans."
"We’ve got a police state-plus going on here!" cried author Mark Crispin Miller. Miller also claimed that there was "significant Christian extremism in the Pentagon" and that the U.S. Air Force Academy is "like a madrassah."
Without elaborating, writer Jeff Sharlet claimed that the government of Norway is controlled "through and through" by Doug Coe’s Virginia-based Christian group known as the International Foundation. According to Sharlet, the unifying philosophy for Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, and other evangelical groups and leaders is "what they see as the unbreakable bond between Christ and capitalism."
The speakers condemned Republican policies on Iraq, Israel, taxes, the size of government, abortion, and gay rights, among other topics. At times the animosity towards President Bush became quite personal. Strozier made unsubstantiated accusations regarding Bush’s sex life. Yurica called the president a "coward" and a liar, to hearty applause. She said that she identified Bush with "the evil," and she saw him as driven by an obsessive fear that his "real nature will be revealed." Miller declared, "You can’t call George Bush a Christian!" (He made the same pronouncement about conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.) Sharlet, however, made a point of repudiating that judgment as inappropriate.
Another featured speaker was Joseph Hough, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York. Hough mocked Southern Baptist leader Richard Land for opposing homosexual practice while not following Old Testament dietary laws. He complained that John 14:6 (Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." NRSV) had been taken out of context to support a "Christian exclusivism." According to Hough, "that one verse is responsible for the Holocaust." Noting that he "strongly support
Skipp Porteous, a former Pentecostal minister who ultimately "rejected the New Testament as the Word of God" and has "never looked back," called on "the mainline Protestant churches" to "reclaim the Bible." Chip Berlet, editor of Eye’s Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, spoke of his appreciation for the NCC as a counter-voice to conservative Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant clergy.
The NCC’s Edgar indicated that he has no intention of finding common ground with conservative Christians. When asked by an audience member if "we" should try to reach out to "the religious right" or simply fight it, the NCC leader replied that since "the right already has its structure," the "religious left" should instead focus on organizing itself, "infiltrate[ing] our seminaries," and reaching out to "the middle church, the middle synagogue, the middle mosque."